The Right to Write

I've recently finished reading Julia Cameron's last book, The Right to Write for a review on this site, and was amazed at how much I continue to get out of books on writing. After all, I sometimes think, how much can really be said about the writing process? Apparently quite a bit, because people keep writing them, and I keep learning new things from them.

What I found most invigorating about Cameron's book is her belief that we are all writers, that writing is part of our natural birthright. She dispels common myths that keep people from writing, such as the idea that we must have huge amounts of time to write, that writing must be a struggle, that writers can't have a life (my personal demon), and that our writing must be perfect to start with. Her attitudes toward writing and writers are expansive and refreshingly democratic. Whether we're a single woman in Brooklyn; a housewife in Bloomington, Indiana; or an entrepreneur in Rocksprings, Texas; Cameron assures us that we all have the right to write, that all of our stories are important.